Bolivia is located in Central South America, surrounded by Brazil to the north and east, Argentina and Paraguay to the south, and Peru and Chile to the west.
Bolivia's population of 9 million is 2/3 indigenous and 1/3 European and mixed. Some 82% of the population speaks Spanish, 28% speak Quechua, and 18% speak Aymara, the second of numerous native languages. The government recognizes Catholicism as the official religion, but guarantees freedom to practice other religions.
Bolivia's cultural diversity is matched by its geographic diversity. The Andean zone, which occupies 28% of the territory, is formed by two mountain ranges and the high plateau, known as the altiplano, where Lake Titicaca is located. The sub-Andean zone, 13% of the total, consists of a series of sub-tropical valleys, while the lowland plains and forests of the llanos take up 59% of the national territory.
Bolivia has one of the 10 largest forest reserves of the world, with a thousand known species of trees and a great diversity of native species of flora and fauna. It also counts on important energy and mining resources, the most important of which is natural gas.
Bolivia is a poor country whose economy has long revolved around on the export of its raw materials. For centuries following the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, Bolivia was home to the most important source of wealth in colonial Spanish America, the mountain of silver known as Cerro Rico in south-central city of Potosí. Tin has been mined throughout much of the Republican period, but by the late 20th century had become unprofitable. The discovery in the 1990s of huge natural gas deposits in the eastern lowlands brought promise of a new era of export-led growth, but a decade later, large-scale exploitation of these important reserves had yet to begin.
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The oldest known evidence of Bolivian culture, the Tiwanaku, dates from around the 2nd century B.C. It dominated the densely populated region surrounding Lake Titicaca until 1200, when the Aymara emerged as the most powerful ethnic group in the region. Power struggles continued until 1450, when the Incas incorporated Bolivia into their growing empire. The Incas never fully assimilated the Aymara kingdoms, however, nor did they completely control the nomadic tribes of the Bolivian lowlands. These internal divisions doomed the Inca Empire when Spanish conquerors arrived in the early 16th century.
Nearly four centuries of colonial rule ended when independence was proclaimed in 1809, although the Republic named for Simon Bolivar was not formally established until 1825. Bolivia's difficult Republican history has been marked by two disastrous wars - the War of the Pacific (1879-83), when Bolivia lost its seacoast and the adjoining rich nitrate fields to Chile, and the Chaco War (1932-35), when Bolivia lost its lowland Chaco region to Paraguay. The late 20th century was marred by political instability, although since 1985 a series of civilian governments have been elected in democratic processes. The election of the indigenous leader Evo Morales as president in December 2005 by a wide margin brought hopes that Bolivia would at last find a way to harvest its natural resources to the benefit of its long-suffering people.
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